


SHOW DON'T TELL

by purglepurglepurgle



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Parody, forums are the worst, my native language is sarcasm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:02:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21735742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purglepurglepurgle/pseuds/purglepurglepurgle
Summary: Six times a second, I see dogmatic ‘show and don’t tell’ writing advice, so I rewrote one of my fics so there’s more showing and less telling. If you're planning to read this, you should read 'Teatime', first, since that is the fic I chose to... enhance.
Kudos: 1





	SHOW DON'T TELL

**Author's Note:**

> Just reiterating that if you want to read this, you should read 'Teatime', first. (Over at: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20495804 )

"How's my favourite daughter!" Godo's voice boomed as Yuffie felt the hardwood floor of the palace hall underfoot (but through the soft leather wrapped around her feet) as she lifted one foot and put it down and then lifted the other one and put it down in front of the first foot, but not directly in front because that would’ve looked weird. Her footsteps clattered.

"I'm your only daughter," Yuffie replied, brushing her dark brown hair out of her eyes. Suddenly she was seeing flashbacks of all the other times she had said this to her father. The planet had orbited the sun many times between the first one and the most recent. When she had been five. When she had been ten. When she had been older than ten. And some other times too.

"Come, sit with your poor father!" Godo pushed air through his vocal folds using his lungs. "I have not seen you in a hundred years!"

"Yeah, you look about a hundred years older than last time." Yuffie plonked herself down on a mat; her father sat atop the entire pile of cuboid fabric objects that people often used for seating. Indigo, cerulean, puce: many fine colours of many fine fabrics.

"It is not too late for me to marry you off," Godo vibrated his vocal folds again. "But, you have a point. I feel it! I was just saying to Staniv, the _wind_ this year-- it's a wind you feel in your bones; you don't know it yet, but you will when you're my age. No, that wind is no good. Mark my words, this year, it'll steal my spirit when I sleep. Whoosh! And I'll be dead. Will you mourn your old father when he's gone?"

"Well, I don't want the hassle of ruling," Yuffie used nerve impulses to send a message to the muscles of her throat, which responded by creating a motion that produced a series of sound waves that could then be interpreted by her father. Whenever her dad asked this question, his lips would stretch up at the corners like a parabolic thing, his eyes sparkling. Sometimes he was dying of old age. Sometimes he was dying thanks to eating an off bit of salmon. But he was always dying. She imagined answering, “that would suck” and she felt cold shivers run down her spine and she shook. She knew that he would feel the same. She remembered getting on a plane and landing in a different country to him and then buying an apartment and living in it. Ever since then, she had started coming back to her apartment with a spring in her step, whistling a tune. With an ocean between them, they couldn’t shout at each other and hit each other with spells and shurikens. She didn’t ball her hands into fists. The calendar on the wall showed the autumn leaves of September in the photo bit that goes at the top of a calendar. On another wall was a different calendar, left open from the last time they met, for some reason, that had March blossoms in the photo, and a day circled saying ‘YUFFIE VISIT’. She remembered it now: her mind giving her an image of her father and then her thinking that she should go and see him, just in case he was rude enough to die this year. She smiled and her eyelids stretched over her eyeballs so that no light could get in and she couldn’t see anything. He was eating lots of food and gesturing energetically, even though there was more grey in his hair for her to mock.

"You'll be away on one of your trips," Godo used his diaphragm, gleefully, "and you'll get a phonecall-- brriing! brriing!-- and when you answer, they'll say, 'Dear Yuffie, sweet, caring Yuffie, your father has perished in the dark and the cold, all alone', and what'll you reply?"

"I'd check I wasn't getting billed for the call."

"Bah! Ungrateful daughter. You see, Staniv, my life? You see why I should be wailing and weeping? I do not, because I am a strong man, but I challenge any other father to endure a daughter like this!" He gave a great sigh and moved his spine so it was in closer proximity to his cushions, then engaged his lip muscles. "Chekhov! I am already old; if we wait for this tea any longer my daughter will have to bury me here. She will not bother. This will become a palace of the dead. Bring the tea!"

**Author's Note:**

> Procrastinating from my latest novel-attempt by posting this, though I actually wrote it a few months back. 10,000 novel-words written so far, and I have December off for the holidays. *cracks knuckles* (actually, knuckles cracking freak me out...) Do have a few other drafty things in the works. Trying not to just sleep all day. Vincent's onto something.


End file.
